Cookbook Review: Free For All Cooking

September 7, 2011

I was browsing around Amazon looking for gluten-free, dairy-free cookbooks when I came across Free for All Cooking: 150 Easy Gluten-Free, Allergy-Friendly Recipes the Whole Family Can Enjoy. I downloaded the Kindle sample, which gave me most of part 1 – Essentials of Gluten-free Cooking. In addition to talking about which ingredients to use when baking gluten-free, it includes lots of substitutions to make for dairy-free, soy-free, nut-free, and other allergy-free foods. It was here I first learned that there are non-dairy powdered milks, which can be used to substitute for sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk. So I bought the book.

When I looked at the recipes, however, I was disappointed. First of all, there are only 17 pictures for the 150 recipes. Second, the recipes called for things like “1/2 cup butter or nondairy alternative.” Now, from what I’ve seen, non-dairy milk can be substituted for cow’s milk pretty readily. But you can’t shortening or oil for butter and expect it to taste the same. Same with non-dairy cheese. So I’ve been hesitant to try these recipes, without more assurance that the non-dairy adaptations would still taste good.

It does have quite a wide range of recipes in it, though, including a wide range of bread and rolls. So I may try a few out. If I find any that work well, I’ll post them here with the specific non-dairy adaption I made. That way you can trust that it works.